


Learning You

by qwanderer



Series: Midnight Mystery [13]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Arguing, Barebacking, Established Relationship, F/M, Frostiron Bang 2013, Hypothermia, Jotunn!Loki, M/M, aftermath of mind control, fem!Loki, genital piercings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2013-09-20
Packaged: 2017-12-27 02:24:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/973170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony and Loki have been together for more than a year, but they still keep discovering new things about each other. </p>
<p>Like all the things Loki has been craving and won't ask for. Like the things Tony has been hiding from the public all his life.</p>
<p>Like the fact that they both still feel like frauds in the hero business.</p>
<p>Really, there's a whole world of things they haven't figured out.</p>
<p>(This is a good entry point to the Midnight Mystery series even though it's chronologically pretty far in. Each chapter is satisfyingly smutty - and there's some of each of them being on top.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Seeing

**Author's Note:**

> Quick note on the tech from this universe (and some of it's new, so I'd be explaining it anyway):
> 
> Arc pods: very small magic crystals created from chips of the Bifrost
> 
> PERB units: Portable Einstein Rosen Bridge units, rectangular frames powered by arc pods that can dial each other to form small portals
> 
> SUPERB arrays: Stark Utilities Portable Einstein Rosen Bridge arrays, collections of PERB units placed in strategic locations to move resources such as air and water
> 
> Everything else you can pretty much pick up as you go along - some pretty common tropes are used in this universe.
> 
> This is very loosely based on one of the prompts submitted to the Bang - Loki finds being topped while in jotunn form reassuring, but won't ask for it outright. How that spawned this whole story, I'm not really sure.
> 
> Awesome graphics by AngelicMercy are [here!](http://angelicmercy.tumblr.com/post/61751550504)

They were in bed, Tony lazily moving his fingers across the familiar blue skin, when Loki asked, "Do you ever miss being with human women?" 

Tony froze briefly, then answered. "Of course not. How could I when I have you?" 

Loki let out an annoyed breath. "I do not require your sentimental lies, Tony Stark." 

"Oh, well in _that_ case..." Tony rolled his eyes. "No. You're everything I need." 

"I promise you. This is not a test. It is merely a question." 

"And _that_ was merely an answer. But I'm starting to think there was a right answer and a wrong answer and I got it wrong." Tony frowned. "If it's just a question, it's just a question, and you'll let it go." 

"It's not _wrong_ , just unexpected," Loki countered. "Though I do find it _incredibly_ difficult to believe." 

"Well, believe it," Tony said defiantly. He rose and went into the bathroom without a word, closing the door while he showered, which was unusual. Loki decided he had better not push any more right at that moment. 

* * *

Tony was his usual self again when he got back from the interview he'd had scheduled that afternoon - bright and expansive and full of energy. He was talking a mile a minute about marketing and practical solutions and arc reactors and the new SUPERB units they had designed together. Loki was glad he had enjoyed himself, and yet at the same time, he couldn't help being irritated. 

When Tony noticed, he tapped Loki's shoulder, saying, "Hey, what's got you blue, Cookie Monster?" 

Loki gave him a snide look in return. 

"I'm serious, what's up?" 

"You look practically edible in that suit, but then you already know that," said Loki. 

"Is that really a problem for you?" Tony said, smirking. 

"Not when I am by your side," answered Loki. "But when you give so many interviews, looking like this, I start to wonder what you get out of it all." 

Tony shook his head. "This is just another suit of armor, another fight to save the world. Clean energy's a big deal, for us here on this planet without magic." 

"Is all of it really necessary? For you to be the face of this movement, change your world singlehandedly?" 

"I'd say so, I'm not going to let someone else learn the reactors well enough to do the job." 

"We are no longer limited to only this planet, you know." 

Tony blinked. "Seriously? I'm kind of attached to this one, I'm not just gonna give up on it. You know that. What the hell is this, Loki? What is this about?" 

"Do you need the media hounds to pay attention to you? What does it get you?" 

"This is JUST BUSINESS! This is WHAT I DO! What is your DAMN PROBLEM Loki?" 

"You smile at them like you are _for_ them, you invite them to think of you. You do _anything_ it takes to get their attention." 

"Well, _yeah,_ that's how this _works,_ Loki. That's PUBLICITY. That's the whole game. And don't tell me it's one you never played to get what you wanted, probably something a whole lot less noble than what I'm fighting for!" 

"But enough is enough! You are MINE!" 

"Yeah I am, Lokes." 

The sudden quiet assuredness of that comment almost derailed Loki's tirade, but he remembered his anger. "Then stop selling yourself to THEM." 

"You want to call me a whore? Is that what you want? That's just great, that's fine, because I will use whatever resources I have to get what I want." 

"That's what I'm afraid of." 

Tony frowned at him, surprised. "Loki, what the hell are you talking about?" 

"The kinds of attention you used to get; you must miss it." 

" _This_ again? No, Loki, I don't." 

"I don't know why you won't admit it," Loki said. "It is not as if I am ignorant of your past. And you know many things from mine, with somewhat... mixed... effects on my reputation. And yet you insist on this lie?" 

"Loki, I'm _not lying!_ " Tony said, utterly exasperated. 

"I know you slept with many women in your former life. There must have been a reason for that. Can someone really change so completely?" 

Tony, absorbing that, first gaped like a fish, then flushed with anger, then turned and left the room without a word. 

Loki knew that he'd screwed up, he just didn't know quite how. So while Tony hid in his workshop and sulked, Loki went in search of Pepper. 

"Hey, Loki," she said, smiling as he came into her office. Her smile faded as he entered. "Is everything okay?" 

"I need your help," he said. "I have hurt him, I have made him angry, and I do not know why." 

Pepper looked at Loki piercingly. "Was he yelling, or did he go quiet?" she asked. 

"Both," he answered. "Why?" 

"Shit," she said. "Yelling Tony just means he's got something he needs to explain and he can't believe you don't understand it yet. Yelling is fine. When he goes quiet, that means you did hurt him. One of his weak spots. What did you say?" Pepper frowned menacingly at him. 

"I don't know," said Loki, sinking down into a chair. "I wanted to know what he thought about, what his fantasies were. I thought he was lying to me to avoid my wrath, and I may have spoken a little more harshly than I intended, but nothing that should have provoked that reaction!" Loki was raising his voice in frustration again, and he forced himself to be calm. 

"I'm not going to ask for details," Pepper said, her face warring between concern and humor. "That isn't my business any more. But I will tell you that when Tony and I were together, he never asked for anything but that I stay with him. Before that, he did certain things because they were expected of him, because he was cultivating an image, but I think he enjoyed bragging to the press more than the incidents themselves." She frowned thoughtfully. "A lot of the time, he'd have Happy screen his hookups for attractiveness. Like he couldn't even tell for himself, he just wanted an average joe's opinion on what kind of person he should be sleeping with. Because that's who he wanted to impress, other guys, the public, the kind of people he did business with. I mean come on, why else would you make a point to sleep with twelve cover models from the same magazine in one year? Bragging rights. Business, not pleasure. Well, he used to say that like it was a joke, but I've begun to suspect that he meant it." She rolled her eyes. "And honestly, he's always been more interested in his own appearance than anyone else's. He designed the suit, after all. But women's fashion? Never really seemed to interest him." She sighed. "And then suddenly he decided he wanted to be seen as one of the good guys, and it all stopped. I don't think he slept with a single person between when he got the arc reactor and when he and I started seeing each other. And I ran his life, so... I'd know." 

"I see," Loki said at last. "Thank you." 

"Did any of that help?" she asked. 

"Perhaps," he said. "At least now I have a place to start." 

Her expression softened. "He'll forgive you almost anything, you know, as long as you try to see things his way. He knows he can be difficult to live with sometimes." 

Loki shook his head. "I am beginning to see that half of what makes Tony so complicated is that he is so simple underneath the masks. I will do my best to make things right." 

"Good," said Pepper. "You do that. Now get out of here, I've got a meeting in ten minutes." She gave a little shooing motion, and it gave Loki a strange confidence that she trusted him to figure this out. 

Loki went down into the workshop, Jarvis allowing him access without question, and as he approached Tony the inventor turned, tired and hurt and glad and hopeful. Loki smiled sadly at him. 

"I apologize," the former god said. "Lying is a constant state for me. I expect it of everyone, as everyone should expect it from me. And yet it did not occur to me that your entire former life might have been a carefully constructed lie." He sighed. "Tell me what you want, and I shall believe you." 

Tony chewed on the inside of his cheek, considering Loki. "It's not being accused of lying that bothered me, you know," he said. "Sometimes I lie. It's not the most horrible thing that's been said about me, by a long way. If I threw a tantrum every time people accused me of lying, I wouldn't have time for anything else." 

"And yet I know very well that I am not simply 'people'," Loki replied. "I should have believed you." 

"It doesn't matter if you believe what I _say,_ " Tony insisted. "As long as you believe in what I do, what I _am._ Trust Iron Man." 

"I have every faith in Iron Man," Loki said earnestly. "Whatever gave you the idea that I did not?" 

"Don't tell me people can't change," Tony said. "Don't tell me it's hard to believe that I've figured out how I want to spend my life." 

"Did I say those things?" Loki asked weakly. 

"A bit," said Tony, coming in close to Loki and slipping an arm around his waist. "But you know what? I've noticed something about the way you talk." 

"And what is that?" Loki asked, both reassured and somewhat trepidatious about Tony's next words. 

"It's that, and okay, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but when you're talking about other people, a lot of the stuff you're saying could be things you think apply to yourself. So maybe you're afraid you can't learn to be honest; you're afraid no matter how much you want this now, someday it won't be enough. You're afraid you can't truly change. And you're afraid that if you show me everything you are, I won't like it. You think you have to hide. So what is it you think you have to hide from me? What do you want?" Tony's eyebrows did a curious dance then, between concern, amusement and realization. "You've slept with women too. You miss that as much as you were afraid I did?" 

Loki shook his head. "No, not precisely." 

"Well, come on, honey butt, give me a hint. Can't make your dreams come true if you don't tell me about 'em." 

"I suppose I have no right to object to being pushed," Loki said, sighing. 

"Nope," said Tony with his signature grin. 

"I... may have been looking for an excuse to be with you while in my female form," he said. 

Tony raised his eyebrows, looking intrigued. "And you thought I might not say yes to that if you just asked, why exactly?" 

"I know that you prefer me in my... natural form," Loki told him. "You have said as much." He gestured to his current blue skin and bright red eyes. 

Tony put a hand on the cool blue surface of his cheek. "This is how I got to know you," Tony said seriously. "And wow, yeah, those eyes... pretty incredible. But as long as it's you, that's what matters. I don't need anything but you, and however you want to look, that's fine with me." 

"You have helped me immensely in coming to terms with this form," Loki said, examining a blue hand thoughtfully. "So much so that I have re-created a self-image surrounding it. But sometimes I miss my former personas." 

"Hey, nothing wrong with green eyes and horns, either," Tony said, smirking. "You know I like that, too, because it's you. Fits you when you're being especially crafty." 

Loki shook his head in a half-scowl, half unwilling smile. "You like the game," he said, shifting abruptly into Aesir form and full armor. "You like remembering when we stood on opposite sides, and I was dangerous and forbidden." He trailed a finger down Tony's neck, reminding them both of a moment long ago, and Tony shivered. 

"Not that that's not true, and by the way don't think for a moment that I'd ever consider you 'not dangerous.' But that's not why. It's because this is you." Tony smirked and hooked a finger under the collar of Loki's armor and pulled him down to look in his eyes. "You are what you always have been. The guy who turned half my workshop upside down adapting everything to recognize your magic, who learned synthetic crystal growth techniques in three weeks, to apply it to an extraterrestrial space travel technology, all in order to get your hands on some of the most interesting crystal specimens I've ever seen. You're smart, is what I'm saying. You sneak up on problems from right angles. It's your _mind_ that I'm hot for." 

Loki smiled. "You are right; this is me, as much, and in some ways, more than my Jotunn form." His smile turned mischievous, and his form shifted again - green eyes were now on a level with Tony's brown ones, Loki now a bare fraction of an inch shorter than his partner. And his - her - clothing was now a green satin dress that clung and shifted with her movements. 

"And this is me as well," she said in a marginally higher voice. "I have spent much more time in this form than I have in the skin that you have come to know best. And there are some things about it that I miss." 

"I recognize you," said Tony, drinking her in with his eyes and smiling uncharacteristically gently. "You're my Loki. Smart and stubborn and gorgeous as ever." He leaned in to kiss her. 

Loki grinned and did not hesitate to display her superior strength, so Tony pushed back, gripping her hard, squeezing her breasts and pulling her tightly into the kiss. 

It was familiar but very different, being with Loki in this form. He always had gone for intelligent women, when it was anything more than show. Maya had been smart, and that had been a fun night, as much about science as sex. Reporters, if they were worth anything, were fun to banter with in or out of bed. And Pepper - God, Pepper was brilliant, she could do anything, keep track of who knows how many accounts, stay cool under enemy eyes, run a company, even stand up to Tony and tell him when he was being an idiot. 

But this was Loki, there wasn't any mistaking that, with the slightly off-kilter fire in her green eyes, her knowing smirk, and the way she knew just exactly how much pressure to use when she dug her nails into that spot on his neck. He lifted her until she was sitting on the edge of the workbench - and she was a bit lighter, subtly softer, he realized as his fingers dug into the flesh of her ass - and moved forward between her legs, in his mind running through all the ways this was different, the things he'd have to take into account. He'd been good at this, after all; he'd done his homework to build that reputation. 

So he ran his hands up her thighs, under her skirt, and as he'd suspected, found she wasn't wearing underwear. What he did not expect was the piercing, and he laughed in delighted surprise. Loki chuckled back, but it turned to a moan as Tony moved his thumb against the jewelry, pressing lightly between the two balls at each end of the curved bar. Tony loved the sound she made, surprised and eager and thirsty. "You did miss this," he said, smiling against her ear. 

"Mmm, yes," she breathed. "But most people underestimate me in this form; that's why I created it. This will be different, I think. You don't." 

"Never," he agreed, biting at her neck, then finding her zipper and freeing her breasts. He wasn't tender with them either, and the feel of teeth against her nipples made her gasp. She was surprised, too, when he sank even farther down, ending up on his knees with his head between her thighs. He hitched her skirt up, pressing his mouth unhesitatingly to the flesh around and below her piercing, sliding his tongue up and along the slit of her vagina before focusing in on her clit and the pierced fold just above it. 

Loki's breath was quick and heavy, and her hands on his neck and in his hair were just a bit uncontrolled, pulling him in and scrabbling against his scalp in helpless want. It thrilled Tony to know that he was doing that to Loki. And the way the little silver spheres played against his tongue... it was fascinating and delightful, especially because pushing at them _just so_ made Loki gasp every time. It was definitely something that needed to be explored further. How like Loki to come up with something like this - a game Tony didn't quite know the rules to, a challenge he couldn't resist, where just playing it gave Loki what she wanted. 

He shifted his hands, gripping her thigh with one, and moving the other in below where his mouth worked, his fingers finding their way inside her, alternately reaching and curling as they sought the best reaction. Loki moaned and swayed, rocking against his fingers as they played over a certain spot, so he focused there, and she whined and writhed in delight, pulling his hair in her enthusiasm. When that caused Tony to hum with pleasure, Loki gasped again, then cried out, Tony's name and a string of swears spilling out after it in an increasingly frantic tumble. 

He worked his fingers faster and sucked a bit, teeth knocking against the jewelry, and the words were just great gasps and sobs and Tony's name now, and her fingers scratched restless trails across his neck and back; finally the sounds became a scream, and he pressed his tongue against her and slid his fingers in farther, and he felt her shudder like an earthquake and spasm around his hand, and the next scream sounded as if it was emptying her of the last of what she was, leaving her spent. 

Tony rose from the floor to kiss her again, arms cradling her limp form and pulling her close. He grinned. "Guess I'm not too badly out of practice," he said with a breathy laugh. 

"You'll do," she murmured back into his ear, voice utterly lazy and yet still authoritative. "Of course, it would be even better if you could make that happen again." 

"Your wish is my command," he said, and gave a brief glance at their surroundings before lifting her now lighter frame off the workbench and laying her down on the couch in the corner, slipping the green dress the rest of the way off as he did so. He tossed it to one side along with his shirt, then he tugged his pants down, freeing his very hard cock. He leaned down over her, first taking most of one breast into his mouth and sucking hard, then moving his mouth to her ear and whispering, "Ready?" 

Loki shivered with pleasure both echoed and anticipated. "Very much so," she said. "Break me open, if you can." 

Tony just had to close his eyes and breathe for a moment, because those words did things to him. Then he opened her with his fingers to guide himself in, holding back, going slow, just to savor the feeling of being inside Loki in a way he never had been before. He took an unsteady breath, looking at her wicked but pleasure-softened smile. He tangled one hand in her hair, kissing her, and then he didn't want to hold back any more. 

He slammed into her, giving in to the sensations he remembered but that now had a much different flavor, the flavor of magic, of power, of the cosmic rightness of what they were to each other - of Loki. He lifted one of her legs to adjust the angle, and she let out a gasping cry, and the sound of that in his ears just spurred him onward, farther in to the wet and welcoming hollow, and her nails against his back agreed viciously. 

He couldn't come yet, which was going to be a challenge - everything was smooth and intense and perfect - but he wasn't going to disappoint Loki. He moved a hand down, finding her jewelry - and wasn't that handy! - and pressed and played teasingly with it as he maintained his furious pace. 

The sounds she made then were delicious, little uneven breaths and whines, louder now with every thrust of his hips. His legs protested the effort but it didn't seem important. He pressed harder at the pierced flesh just above her clit, and she gave a delighted yelp, which elongated into a moan as both her legs came up to wrap around his waist. With his next thrust she screamed and gripped him with near painful strength, and he felt like the universe had warped around him, pulling him to the edge with irresistible force. 

They came together, grinding out the last of their pleasure against one another, gasping and gulping breaths as if the air was vanishing from between them. As if the heat of the flame that was sex between them had consumed it all and these were their last moments. Tony couldn't say he'd mind if they were. They'd last forever, in this panting, breathless moment, with Tony's forehead resting between Loki's sweat-damp breasts. 

But eventually breath slowed, and Loki's fingers combed lazily through Tony's hair, as they had the first time the two of them had done this, and Tony remembered how they had fought that day, how they always ended up back at misunderstood and defiant, how that only made the fire hotter. And he knew, feeling Loki's fingers in his sweaty hair, that Loki wasn't about to let him go easy, that Loki was in this for the long haul. 

They weren't simple. They were never simple. But neither of them could have done simple, not for long. 

And Tony was starting to get used to the idea that they had lifetimes ahead of them, time to learn. 


	2. Feeling

Tony was fucking freezing. 

He was in the middle of nowhere, Alaska, in an ice cave, with no comms, and no real cold weather gear and he would probably have been dead by now if he hadn't taken the time to at least change into his more insulative under armor before he left on what should have been a quick maintenance run. 

One of the SUPERB cold air intake arrays hadn't been responding, and there were no active maintenance crews in these remote stations, so when a problem showed up at this one, Tony had figured he'd better go check it out himself. 

He should have realized that the array, his work and Loki's, wouldn't have failed completely unless something catastrophic happened to it. And the same catastrophe had caught up with Tony before he'd even arrived at the site. 

Some kind of giant alien fuzzy caterpillar was lumbering across the landscape, and it seemed to take offense at radio transmissions, because when Tony had seen it and tried to call for backup, its gigantic body had reared up and smacked him out of the air. Hard. 

So now he was hiding, all comms down, having determined that a) the thing emitted some kind of natural white noise on all radio bands, and b) bursts strong enough to cut through the static provoked its ire. Thankfully during that test he had managed to avoid any more injury, but he had lost the last of the suit's standard comm equipment. 

His best chance of calling for help now was the quasi-magical PERB unit built into the arm of his suit, but there must have been some damage to that too, because it wouldn't connect. The indicator light was down. He'd have to rewire it and pray that it worked. 

Tony gritted his teeth and removed the armor from his hands and forearms, taking a miniature tool kit from a compartment in one of the leg plates. He wasn't sure how bad the damage was, how long it would take, and he was already feeling the effects of the drop in temperature. 

The plates popped apart, and he was very glad to see the glow of the tiny arc pod, but then he noticed that it had slipped from its housing. That would take some delicate work to fix, and soon he was going to have trouble keeping his hands from shaking. 

Twenty minutes of cursing, slipping, near disaster for himself and the circuits later, he thought he might have it. He hoped he had it. He barely had enough coordination to dial - in fact, he missed a button the first time and had to cancel out. He didn't want to accidentally dial a unit underwater or in vacuum. Those numbers were locked out of all but their appropriate counterparts and Tony's personal units, but he could dial them from this, which was his. 

Finally he keyed the right code, and a painfully warm blast of air washed over him. "Loki," he managed, teeth chattering. 

The blue face peered through the tiny gate, confusion and concern washing over it before it settled on determination. "I will come," was all he said before the connection cut, and Loki was before him, all blue skin and thin black cotton, no distress at the cold. He wrapped his arms around Tony and whisked him back to the tower. 

"What in the Nine have you gotten yourself into?" the god said then, all anger wrapped tight about his concern. 

Tony only leaned against Loki, shivering and looking miserable. 

"Sir is suffering from what appears to be moderate hypothermia," Jarvis said. "His core body temperature must be raised." 

"What can I do?" Loki said, looking to the ceiling for instructions. 

"Remove his insulative clothing without jostling him more than necessary, get him into bed and apply heat," the AI said calmly. "For example, shifting into one of your other forms and maximizing skin-to-skin contact. There is an electric blanket available, if you would prefer. I have already increased the ambient temperature setting for the penthouse and I am monitoring his core temperature and heart rhythm via the reactor housing." 

Loki had already slipped into his pale Asgardian skin, not changing his thin cotton clothing, and Tony's cold weight in his arms made him shiver in a way he didn't like at all. In light of what Jarvis had said about jostling, he opted to remove Tony's clothing using magic, his own shirt following, and it was mere seconds later that he had his lover under the covers, limbs curled gently around the frozen form. 

"You're hot," Tony said, and laughed weakly. He seemed somewhat dazed. "Kinda a new feeling, I'm usually the one snuggling up to the ice cube. Not that I mind. You're always hot, you know, in the best ways. But this is..." Tony squirmed a little, his body waking up from its stupor. "Really nice right now." He playfully pressed his cold nose into the creamy warm skin of Loki's neck. 

Loki pulled him in, pressing their skin together and shivering a little himself at the way the engineer's body was leaching heat from his. He reached for control of his own life energy, increasing heat and spreading it to his skin, moving his arms across Tony's and spreading long-fingered hands across his back. 

"Mmm," Tony hummed. "Magic, right? You're like a living temperature regulation system. Perfect." He curled into Loki, just the fraction of an inch farther that was still possible. 

Loki held his lover, and the god was still stiff with fear, realizing just how vulnerable this man was. The apple had stopped him aging, but he was still in danger from any other way a human might die. Loki had gotten to him in time, but he could just as easily have failed to. Loki was doing everything he could, but Tony was still shivering in his arms. 

Tony's eyes were regaining some of their clarity now. He frowned, echoing a tiny bit of Loki's fear. "Why am I still so cold?" 

It was Jarvis who answered. "Your heartbeat is steady and regaining its speed, which is a good sign. Your core temperature, however, has not yet increased, probably due to colder blood from the limbs circulating back to the torso. It should begin to rise soon, but it will be a gradual process." 

Tony nodded, the motion almost lost in his continued shivering. "That sounds bad. I really almost bit it this time, didn't I? Shouldn't've gone alone. Just thought it was simple mechanical failure." 

Loki kissed his ear, just relishing in the moment and the fact that this extraordinary man was still alive. "You have been known to do even more foolish things," he murmured. "I've come to accept it." Then Loki paused, looking into Tony's eyes with curious realization of what he had heard. "What was the matter with the array, if not mechanical?" 

"Oh yeah, probably should have mentioned the giant radioactive space caterpillar rampaging around out there," Tony said, looking more like himself. "Someone should probably do something about that." 

Loki smiled fondly, not remotely caring. 

Jarvis made the relevant calls. "The other five Avengers are assembling on the landing pad, waiting for quinjet pickup," he said a few minutes later. 

"Oh, tell 'em to use PERB comms if they need to talk, radio is not a good idea around that thing, pisses it off," Tony said. 

"Very good, Sir. I will inform them." 

"Feels weird not to be heading out," Tony said contemplatively to the ceiling. 

"You have done your part," Loki said, shifting his arms in their positions around Tony's body to better distribute the heat. "As unwilling scout, perhaps, but it is done. Now, you will stay and heal." 

Tony sighed; his shivering was finally beginning to subside and his usual state of chronic restlessness was reasserting itself. 

"Do not even think about getting up," Loki said before Tony could start speaking. 

Tony pouted but didn't protest, instead burying his face in Loki's neck again. He really was still feeling cold and off kilter. Loki lifted a hand to run it over and through the short brown hair, wishing to comfort and calm. 

"You know what I want?" Tony said after a minute. "Coffee. Really hot coffee." 

"Caffeine would not be advisable at the moment," Jarvis said, "but hot cocoa or herbal or decaffeinated tea would be most beneficial. At a moderately warm temperature, of course." 

Tony made a face at the mention of herbal tea, but then he said, "What about that stuff Bruce makes with the coconut milk and all the spices?" 

"The recipe is on file," the AI said, "and the tea can easily be replaced with decaffeinated. Shall I begin the sequence?" 

"Yeah, do that," Tony said, relaxing again for the moment. Loki was glad, and he noted the extension of a pattern - the only time Tony was truly comfortable waiting was when he was waiting for good food. He made a note to make use of that himself in the future. So they spent the next few minutes in comfortable silence, just listening to the sounds of the huge, semi-robotic coffeemaker in the other room, through the door that had been left ajar in the earlier chaos. Then Jarvis informed them that it was ready. 

"I guess you're going to have to get up and retrieve that," Tony said with the slightest shade of unhappiness in his voice. "No robots on this floor." 

"Indeed I will," said Loki. He gave Tony a gentle squeeze and a kiss before extricating himself from the covers. "I will be back in a moment." 

The drink smelled rich and full of nutmeg, what Bruce had called a vegan masala chai, and it seemed quite appropriate, Loki thought. He carried it into the bedroom, but then put it down quite quickly when he saw that Tony's shivering had once again resumed. 

"Jarvis, what has happened?" he asked urgently, scrambling under the covers again, putting his hands on Tony to reassure them both. 

"Sir's temperature is still rising," the AI answered. "His recovery is going well. I do not believe that the resumption of this symptom is due to purely physical factors." 

"Ah," said Loki quietly. He tucked Tony's head under his chin, pulling him close once more, running warm hands across his back. 

Tony grumbled a little, but again didn't fight the embrace. "I'm supposed to be fearless," he said somewhat indistinctly against Loki's chest. "This sucks." 

"You do not fear danger, any number of enemies or the prospect of death," Loki told him. "What you fear is the loss of who you are - the qualities you use to build. The dexterity of your hands and your mind." 

"Oh thanks, that makes me feel so much better," Tony said through once more chattering teeth. 

"It is not a prospect that many are brought face-to-face with," said Loki, "and if they were, they would be terrified. There is no shame in fear of such a prospect." One hand stroked Tony's hair again. "But you have them still. You are safe. You are whole. And if you ever lost those things, I would move Yggdrasil to restore them to you. As you once helped to return my magic to me." 

Tony shifted against Loki, humming a mixture of discontent and thanks. Loki suspected that any more overt sympathy would not be welcome. So he said, "Now sit up. Your tea is getting cool." 

Tony wrestled himself to a sitting position against the headboard, swearing a little, and Loki arranged the blankets around his shoulders before handing him his mug. Tony wrapped his fingers around it, sighing contentedly. "It's not coffee," he said with feigned regret. "But I guess it'll do." It had a rich smell that reminded him of eggnog and it was gloriously warm in his hands. 

He took a sip, and it was like liquid reassurance, hot and sweet and rich. He closed his eyes just to savor the feeling of it going down his throat. "Okay, now that's..." He noted with relief that his shivering had calmed again. "Exactly what I needed." He drank more freely now, welcoming the warmth and feeling it settle in his stomach. Soon the cup was empty, and he put it down, shimmying back down the bed and settling in Loki's arms again. 

There was a content moment before Tony inevitably started to get restless again, and the shifting of his bare skin against Loki's was now normal enough to inspire interest rather than concern. 

"How are you feeling?" Loki asked him. 

"Still cold," said Tony with a slight grimace. "But now, as a bonus, I'm bored." 

Loki hummed consideringly. "Well, you are staying in bed," he said with conviction, moving his hands across Tony's skin with more intention than before, "but I could more than likely find some way to occupy you." 

Tony smirked. "Really? You think that's medically advisable?" 

"I think it's the only way I'm going to be able to keep you lying down much longer," he said. "I also think that if it was a threat to your health, Jarvis would have said something by now." 

"You're probably right," Tony agreed. "He gets really nosy about little things like me almost dying." 

"I like that about him," Loki said. "So the only question now is, are you up for it?" 

Tony leaned in and ran his nose and lips up the side of Loki's neck, and the shiver it gave Loki was a good one this time. "Always," Tony whispered, chuckling into Loki's ear. 

Immediately Loki caught his mouth in a kiss, deep and hungry but oh so careful, and Tony usually would have objected to that delicacy but at the moment all he felt was warmth, Loki's warm wet tongue in his mouth and the warmth of the body lying next to him, and right now that was what he craved. 

He put his recovered hands to good use, tracing lines on Loki's neck, sliding into his hair, mapping over the ridges of his ribs and pulling him closer. He hummed in consideration as Loki pulled away from his mouth and began to kiss his chest. "Nope, still bored," he said, and the fingers still tangled in the hair at Loki's neck pulled hard. 

Loki growled deep in his throat, and finally stopped treating Tony like an invalid. He moved his mouth back up to Tony's neck, teeth first brushing the skin, then pressing in, nipping and pulling and altogether making Tony feel as if his flesh were waking up, coming back to life, that everywhere Loki bit was flushing with heat; his mouth was drawing out life where before there had only been cold and stillness. 

Tony groaned with how good it felt, and his hands scrambled downward to clutch Loki's ass, pulling him closer. They both shivered, then, as sensitive skin met, separated only by the fabric of Loki's pajamas. Tony squirmed, keeping that sensation active and sparking an awareness of the skin of their chests, still pressed together. 

Loki's tongue plunged into his mouth again, and his graceful but powerful fingers wandered their way down Tony's naked form, skirting his cock for the moment and instead exploring the crease of the thigh, then cupping Tony's balls. 

Tony gasped sharply, the heat of that hand shocking to the cool flesh, and his grip on Loki tightened, and he let a whine escape him. 

Loki looked a bit alarmed, moving his hand away. "Good or bad?" he asked. "Are you injured?" 

"Nnnghgood," Tony managed. He took a moment to catch his breath "Mostly. Just... surprised me. Please, continue." He raised his eyebrows, then smiled, face full of humor. 

The light tone of that comment reassured Loki, and he returned his hand to the same place, watching Tony's reactions carefully. 

He was rewarded with a look of bliss, a sudden slackening of many of the tensions in Tony's face. He squeezed just slightly, drawing a moan from the inventor, before he removed his hand again, sliding it out from under the blankets to retrieve lube from the drawer. He slicked his fingers, making sure the liquid wasn't too cold before rubbing it against Tony's ass, and he was gentler than usual, pressing a knuckle up against the opening to test its tightness before he did anything more. 

Tony groaned and gripped Loki tight, pulling his hair again. "C'm'on, Lokes, you're killing me here. _Figuratively,_ " he spat with a pointed eyeroll when that only prompted another pause. "Need you in me. Please." 

The strain in that voice spurred him on, and he slipped a finger in, working it in circles to test and stretch the muscle, then added a second, curling both up in order to give Tony a taste of what he had been asking for. 

Tony rolled back into it, groaning, and Loki was swept by desire, finally pushing his concern firmly to the side to make way for agreeing with Tony that he really ought to be inside the other man by now. 

He braced himself above Tony, making sure the blankets were still secure around them before pushing in, slow and easy, and there was something different and not entirely unwelcome about that. Stark was human, but not weak, never weak, and there were few enough times when either of them could admit to needing care or tenderness. 

Tony gasped, and his brow wrinkled in fascinated appreciation at how it felt. "This how it feels when you're blue?" he asked. "You're so hot, it's like..." and he groaned again as Loki's movements sped up, thoughts for once lost in favor of more immediate needs. He tugged Loki by the neck until he could kiss the god, wet and hungry, as if Tony could contain Loki entirely if he sucked hard enough. Loki closed his eyes and let free a noise of surrender, leaning down into Tony and continuing his slow, luxurious thrusts, giving himself leave to enjoy this, to enjoy caring for Tony. 

Tony, for his part, was clinging to Loki with all his strength, breathing hard and nearly lost to pleasure already. Feeling Loki inside him, warm and solid, familiar in all but temperature, was like a heavenly choir, like the return of something lost and desperately missed. It was a relief, like hearing Jarvis again when he returned home for the first time with the reactor in his chest. It was perfect, almost too much; it knocked away all the wrongness clinging to his brain from his misadventure and how close he came to losing everything he valued. 

Instead there was only Loki, only this moment, only this warmth. The air buzzed with it, both the arousal they felt and the focus Loki was giving him, honed in like Tony would on one of his projects. 

It was the eyes that did him in, green and penetrating and still with that sliver of concern that only made them seem more focused, but open and vulnerable - the _want_ in those green eyes was extraordinary. The thirst. And then long fingers found their way to Tony's cock, flitting along the length for an amazingly good moment before tightening around it, and Tony arched and swore, resisting for only a moment longer before letting himself fall over the edge, yelling and gasping. 

Loki slid into him a few more times, suspending him in the wonderful warm haze of pleasure, then came as well. The heat washing through Tony was strange but very good, and he sighed an approval, laughing slightly. 

Loki slumped down beside Tony, empty of tension now and at last relaxing his guard over Tony's state of health. 

Despite various causes of soreness, Tony was extraordinarily comfortable and content, and he thought to himself that he should remember this effect to take advantage of it again, if there was ever an opportunity. 

He wouldn't be setting out to replicate it - hypothermia sucked balls - but it did seem to have its compensations. 


	3. Having

Tony walked lazily out of his workshop, thoughts still flitting from project to project, until he came across Loki sitting in the open living space, frowning consideringly at the photo spread of Tony in a magazine that was on the table. 

"Is this still bothering you?" Tony said, leaning his elbow on Loki's shoulder to peer down at the pictures. That particular photographer _had_ been fun to work with. 

"No," Loki lied transparently. 

"You _are_ jealous." He leaned down to kiss Loki on the cheek, earning a sideways glare. "Don't worry. The media don't get anything but what I feed them. They don't get the real me." 

"Who are you, then?" Loki asked, pulling Tony down to sit beside him. 

Tony's mobile face crunched in a little as he thought, and he played with Loki's hair. "I'm hot for brains, but you know that," he said. "Don't mind cameras, but too many eyes? Makes me feel crowded. Stuck. I love the public as long as I don't have to actually see 'em. Nobody knows that. Well, not many, if I've done my job." He curled in tighter next to Loki on the chaise, nipping at his ear. "They get my face, they don't get my attention. What I am is all yours." 

Loki smiled contentedly at that, a god receiving the worship he was due. He turned to kiss Tony, and it started as light and affectionate, but quickly turned deep and possessive. 

Tony pulled away before too long, stomach growling. He made a face. "Well, I guess I'll be all yours in a minute. Haven't really eaten much yet today." 

Loki sighed in exasperation. "I suppose it wouldn't do to let my pet starve," he said, standing. "Even if it is entirely his own fault." 

Tony grinned. "Don't I know it. Well, it's partly Jasper's fault, but I made Jasper, so I guess that argument only takes me so far. Hey, do we still have those chocolate cherry creamsicles?" He moved into the kitchen as he talked. 

"Who is Jasper?" Loki asked, all curiosity. He did love hearing of Tony's work. "A new mechanical creature?" 

"More circuits than gears," Tony answered as he prepped a sandwich for himself, piling one side with meat and mayo and the other with tomato and sprouts. "Just Another System Perfectly Embodying Reason. He's gonna run the Stark Vistas facility." 

"Like your Jarvis runs the tower and suits? Why build a new intelligence when Jarvis can do as much as you ask of him?" 

"Well first of all, because I can," said Tony, tearing into his sandwich and chewing with brisk efficiency before speaking again. "Gotta prove Jarvis isn't a fluke. Second, the job requirements are a little bit different. Jarvis is supposed to look after me. Jasper's priority is every single person inside the new facility at any given time. So he's a little bit..." Tony wobbled his hand in the air, a thoughtful almost-sneer on his face. "...Less interesting than the prototype model. More responsible. Less snarky. If I get his programming right, I'll know because I won't be able to stand him any more." 

Loki laughed as he took all this in, and Tony ate more of his sandwich. "And these lives you create," Loki said, stalking closer to Tony. "They demand so much of your attention? What are they to you?" 

Tony gave Loki a look, not much dulled by the fact that his cheeks were bulged out with sandwich. Once he'd swallowed, he answered. "Yeah, they're important. So's Bruce, so's everyone who lives here. Not like you. The J's and the bots might need some extra attention sometimes. I'm kinda... responsible for them. I'm all they've got." He turned in close to Loki, catching his eyes. "But if it comes down to it, I'm gonna choose you. They're my kids, but they're not..." Tony's face twisted up as he tried to figure out how to phrase what he needed to say. "Well, I know you'd pick Hel over me." 

Loki squeezed his eyes shut, caught just a little off guard by the reaction that statement caused. "Cosmos forbid I should have that choice set in front of me," he said, voice shaking just a bit. "I do not think I would ever regain what sanity I have managed to cling to." 

"Hey, hey, no, don't go all Sophie's Choice on me. All I meant was..." Tony wrapped his fingers around one of Loki's arms, giving a squeeze and waiting for the god to look at him. "All I meant was, you need me, I'm here. I know if she needs you, you're gone. And that's fine. That's great. She's your kid. That's what you do, or so I've been told. It's part of the deal. But you ever need me, I'm here." 

"I do not believe it would be as simple as you seem to think it," Loki said, folding Tony into his arms and holding on tight. 

"Not easy, maybe," said Tony, moving a hand to Loki's neck and smirking just a little. "But simple? Yeah. Not even a question. You'd go." 

Loki rested his head on Tony's shoulder, not answering. There was silence for a minute, and finally Tony got restless, breaking it. "All right, do I get to finish this sandwich or what? Cause I could...." 

"No," Loki interrupted. "I need you now." 

Tony chuckled quietly, fond and sad, and nodded his agreement to the demand. The teleportation took them soon after, dropping them in their bedroom, and as soon as Tony felt solid again, he was kissing Loki, forceful and hungry. 

Loki was definitely impatient today, because Tony soon found himself skin to skin with the god, clothing gone who-knows-where with magic, and down on the bed before he really had time to adjust. Today he was warm pale skin and demanding green eyes, every inch the conqueror he had been when they first met. There was challenge in those eyes, and Tony met them without hesitation. 

"I would take you," Loki said, "and I am not in a mood to hold back my strength." 

"Perfect," Tony answered, pulling Loki closer. "I want to feel what you can do. I wanna know everything about you." He bit at Loki's jaw, open-mouthed and beginning to breathe faster. 

"You will know," Loki breathed. "The strength of a god." He dove lower to suck at Tony's neck, fierce and bruising. 

Tony chuckled again, delighted anticipation fighting with the slightest edge of worry for Loki's mood; whether it was fear for or of him, it wasn't clear, but it only sharpened Tony's determination to enjoy this, to make it good. 

Loki's hands ranged all over Tony's body, inspecting, claiming, teasing every nerve into sensitivity. A hot tongue suddenly pressed into the crease of Tony's hip made him yell, "God, Loki, _that,_ do that again." Loki only grinned and didn't, instead lifting Tony bodily and flipping him onto his front, beginning the teasing anew along the engineer's spine. 

"Gah, all right, okay, I can work with this, but actually could you _please_ get to the fucking part? I like being able to touch you but I like that part even more." 

Loki chuckled and reached for the lube, and continuing the theme of quick and harsh, pushed two fingers into Tony all at once, pressing in too fast and causing Tony to produce a noise that was nearly a scream. "Is that what you wanted?" Loki asked as Tony recovered, panting. 

"Yeah," Tony answered between gulps of air. "Except I'd prefer your dick." 

"As you wish," said Loki, taking only a moment longer to stretch the muscle before withdrawing his fingers and pushing his way in. 

Tony yelled again, overwhelmed, grabbing at the sheets, the edge of pain only intensifying everything. It was perfect. 

"You are mine," Loki told him, pulling back even as he wrapped himself around Tony's body, speaking into his ear, nearly growling and full of fierce protectiveness. 

"All yours," Tony assured him. "I'd get a tattoo, 'Property of Loki,' except you've got a secret identity to maintain now. Probably not the most discreet thing to do." He raised an eyebrow. "Although, I guess it depends where I get it." 

"Not with how thoroughly your skin has been revealed in photos to the public before now," Loki replied, tone torn between teasing and angry. "Now, I think I have had enough of your smart tongue." 

Loki plowed into Tony, strokes deep and claiming, and his teeth and tongue were on the back of Tony's neck, a hovering presence jostled in time with their movement, and the fingers of one hand had a grip on Tony's short hair. Tony was past speech for the moment, instead reduced to panting and short, wordless exclamations, and Loki liked that, that he could shut up Tony Stark. He threw himself into the motions, feeling Tony squirm beneath him and breathing in the smell of his sweat and the metal and fire tang that had followed him from the workshop. 

"Mine," he growled again, quietly. Tony only hummed agreement and nodded jerkily, and Loki felt it, and relished it. 

Their motion gave Tony the friction he needed against the sheets, every thrust pushing him higher on the bed until he had to brace his arms above his head so as not to knock it against the headboard. It was undeniably intense, the force and the focus that Loki put into his motions transforming almost seamlessly into pleasure. He pushed back, wanting Loki to know that he was in this for all it was worth, that this was more than okay with him. 

The intensity built and soon Tony was moaning with each impact, Loki maintaining a pace and a force that would be unlikely for a human. Tony held out as long as he could, then let go with a deep groan, spilling over the sheets and losing himself to the overwhelming sensations. They only intensified as Loki continued to slam into him, long past the point that it was entirely welcome. Tony clutched the sheets and swore and made himself give in to it all, knowing that it was Loki inside him and that even if it was too much, it still wasn't all he wanted. He'd asked for everything. His breaths were nearly sobs now. 

Loki's breathing was deep and hot and harsh in his ear, and the strokes came uneven, and Loki's arms tightened around Tony as he ground against Tony's insides one last breathless time, the god pressing his face against the human's neck to stifle any noise he might have made. Tonight was not a time for demonstration of anything more sentimental than simple possession. 

A whine escaped anyway, hot and pleading against Tony's neck, and Loki's release came like a flood, filling the spaces between them, and he clutched Tony to him harder, feeling that this was everything, that if he had Tony, nothing else could ever matter. He gasped and shivered, and felt himself melting into Tony, as if the two of them might become one thing, one intention, one mind. 

Three breaths, four, and thought became something they could begin to work towards again. Loki shifted, clambering off of Tony and lying down again by his side. They both spent another minute or two in more or less a daze, bodies still alive with sparks and yet slower than syrup. They blinked at each other, sharing that. 

"Did you mean what you said?" Loki asked at last, pondering Tony as the sweat cooled on their bodies. 

"Course I did," Tony answered, eyes still half closed. Then he forced them open. "Wait... what _did_ I say?" 

Loki chuckled, soft and sated, pleased with the idea that Tony would not think of deceiving him. He traced lines with his fingers over the dip in Tony's back as he spoke. "That you would wear my name in your skin. Mark yourself as mine in such a way." 

"Yeah," said Tony, smiling sleepily, half into the pillow. "Think I should?" 

Loki peered at him, slightly disbelieving. "Would you really? When you are so reluctant to give me a promise, any word on what the future might hold?" 

Tony shifted slightly, so that one arm and shoulder lay over Loki and his face was free of the pillow, and answered Loki as seriously as he could. "Change is the one thing I'm not afraid of. I've been marked in more permanent and considerably less pleasant ways; I don't think I could regret this. I wouldn't mind being reminded." 

"You talk as if you would need... something to remember me by." 

"Well, you did die on me once already." Tony looked away briefly at that statement, biting at the corner of his mouth, trying to hide the rest of the reasons. 

Loki looked searchingly into the brown eyes opposite his. He was a little surprised at what he saw, even now. "Tony Stark, you are mine, and I would not abandon you so casually as you seem to think. I have told you that you changed me irrevocably, and a thousand years could not take that away." 

"Can we not do this again?" Tony said, a frown crunching up around his eyes like the conversation left a bad taste in his mouth. "You know I hate it. Everything changes. I've had my heart ripped out of my chest a few too many times to like the idea of any time but right now. Can we just... enjoy this?" 

Loki sighed, arm fitting snugly around his lover. "For now," he said. "There is no particular plan we need make. I only wish you realized how much you have done for me." 

Tony made a noncommittal noise, burying his face in the pillow again. 

"I am going nowhere," Loki said more softly. "I will be here when you wake up." 

And that would have to do. That had become their code for 'always,' because they both heard the echo behind it. 'Tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and every day after.' As far ahead as Tony could bear to look. 

Loki could feel the other man thinking, shifting as he was in his near-sleep, probably considering getting up and returning to his workshop. But Tony settled, eventually, relaxing under the onslaught of long hands stroking down his back and circling their way back up. 

Loki would be angry, but he could not fault Tony for believing that the very world could be torn out from under his feet at every moment. Neither of them were likely to fully trust anyone for a good long while; the ghosts of their previous lives were far too present for that. 

And he could not fault Tony, either, for thinking that perhaps the God of Lies was still holding something back; truly they were, both of them, still far too broken to start building anything lasting out of their new lives. Loki was still working on finding out which parts of him were real; some, he still needed to accept himself, before he could lay them bare to someone else. 

But he still wanted to, drop all his masks and show everything to Tony, and that was how he knew that this mortal was his, and he was Stark's, for as long as they could both tolerate each other. 

For now, and maybe for always. Loki drifted off, then, his mortal in his arms. 


	4. Learning

Loki still periodically went through the SHIELD files Tony hacked and bookmarked for his perusal - the alien artifact research, mostly. There hadn't been anything obviously spectacularly dangerous since the Crystal Specimen 12 incident - which Jane still referred to as the Sirius Black incident - but he occasionally sent SHIELD small notes commenting on their safety precautions or pointing them in the right direction when they were wasting time trying all the wrong things. 

There was nothing in today's batch that screamed for immediate attention, either, but something felt off. 

"Jarvis, can you tell me what Erik Selvig has been doing since the last lab report here?" 

"He seems to have resigned from SHIELD research. Beyond that, there are no clear records. Shall I look into the question further?" 

"Please do, Jarvis." 

What he found, and what he inferred from it, made Loki very much afraid that he had not come close to experiencing all the consequences of the invasion he had led. 

* * *

All seven Avengers suited up, Loki in his blue and gold Stark tech, designed to coordinate with the Jotun form that allowed him control of ice. If Selvig chose to activate the machine he'd created, they would need all the help they could get. 

The jet landed far enough away that it might go unheard, and the Avengers might have a chance of learning more before they met any resistance Selvig might have waiting for them. 

Tony was in the lead as they approached the improvised facility, flying overhead as he often did to get information on what they would be facing. "Selvig's out in the open," he said over comms, "unprotected as far as I can tell. You guys sure he's g..." Tony's voice suddenly cut off in the middle of a word, and Loki fought off a memory of an earlier mission, when that voice over the comms was the only way he could know whether Tony was still alive, and it cut out. He turned his eyes to the armor, looking for evidence, trying to calculate a rescue. 

The Iron Man armor was moving backwards now, and it looked unusually stiff. Loki realized it was running thrusters only and the repulsors hadn't moved to reposition. Jarvis's voice came over the comms now. "I suggest you keep your distance. Mister Stark appears to be under the influence of some kind of paralysis field." 

"Is he all right?" Steve asked, saving Loki from having to find his own voice. 

The armor floated back towards them, eerily still, until it passed a certain point and the arms began to pinwheel. "Hell, no, I am not all right!" Tony's panicked voice said on the comms. "Well, all right, no permanent damage, I think, but that was definitely not OK," he said, setting down in front of them. 

Another memory floated up in Loki's mind, not one of his but rather secondhand, a stuttered description of a nightmare - Tony, unable to move, made to watch as a man he had trusted ripped out his heart. 

"Are you back with us now?" Loki said, knowing that Tony would not appreciate any overt comfort, but trying to give some anyway. "Whole and yourself? You had best be; I have no time to move Yggdrasil today." 

Loki heard the smile in Tony's voice with his returned comment. " _You,_ blue man? You've got all the time in the world." 

"I would make the time," Loki agreed, just a hint of the warmth and significance of the sentiment evident in his tone. Then he returned to business. "But I believe I am needed here at the moment." He looked around at the other Avengers as they gathered. "I believe I can counteract this effect with a variation on a spell my daughter uses. I will need to make skin-to-skin contact with each of you before we proceed any further. And you will all need to stay within sight of my position." 

Steve nodded, easily acknowledging Loki's expertise in this instance. He removed one glove, and held out a hand to the frost giant. Thor followed, clasping his brother's blue hand without hesitation, then Bruce and the assassins. Last of all Tony lifted his face plate, and Loki gave him a quick and unobtrusive but still very much reassuring kiss as he put the spell into place. 

It worked, the spell allowing them control of their bodies despite the disruption caused by the field. Once he was more confident on that point, Tony took to the air again, looking backwards once or twice to make sure Loki was still in sight. 

"Doc still hasn't moved, don't know if he has any other defenses in place. I'll definitely be looking out for that _now,_ though. When I get caught with my pants down I'd much rather it be literal, thanks." Tony's dry and self-mocking muttering wasn't strictly SOP, but Loki found it immensely reassuring, and Cap let it stand. 

As they'd determined on the way over, the trick would be deactivating the machine without setting it off, and they had no plans or idea of how it was built, only the vaguest ideas based on the supplies that had disappeared and that Jarvis calculated it was likely Selvig had taken. Chief among these was a multidimensional crystal sample, a small one this time; in fact, it was Crystal Specimen One: the Tesseract chip that Howard Stark had studied long before he'd acquired the cube itself. But it was still very powerful, larger than the Arc Pods, and dangerous in the wrong hands. 

Loki might have expected it to appear in some. He had never expected those hands to be Erik Selvig's. He was... unsure how to feel about that. 

They approached, Captain America in the lead with his shield raised, Thor beside him, Hawkeye and Widow circling to one side, and Loki, Bruce and Iron Man closing in on the machine on the other. 

"Dr. Selvig," Cap said in a greeting that was somehow both light and challenging. "We'd like it if you could shut down that machine and tell us what you're planning to do with it." 

"I can't," Selvig said. "I need the Tesseract. Can't do my work without it. Not really." 

"You were once a great man, a scientist," Thor said. "You did not need such items of power to prove your prowess, and you told me how much worth there is in not knowing." 

"That's exactly the problem," Selvig spat at him. "That's exactly what I don't have anymore." 

Thor and Steve looked at each other, baffled by the proclamation. Meanwhile, Selvig eyed the trio who were in turn examining his machine. He looked at Iron Man first, knowing who he was and his capabilities. Banner, it took him a moment to place, but he remembered his first interaction with SHIELD and the brilliant man that he had thought he would never see again. 

It was the third figure that really caused him consternation. Armor obviously Stark tech, but blue skin exposed on the hands and face. But the shape of that face, and the eyes..... 

Oh, he knew who this was. 

"You're Loki, I can feel it. Hiding in plain sight. The Tesseract told me about you." He waved a hand in Natasha's direction, warning her to stop where she was, but he continued to look at Loki. "Do all of your new 'colleagues' know what you are, what the skin you wear means?" 

Clint came closer, letting his bow droop in a show of listening, but Selvig knew how fast he could have it aimed again. "Yeah, we've all had the talk about Frost Giants and Loki's excuses for everything he did. I'm not about to claim we're best buds, but he's a part of the team." 

Erik looked at Clint, a little bug-eyed after that speech. "You?" he spat at the archer. "I thought you were smarter than that. He's a devil, he deals in death and the breaking of human spirits. He gave me the Tesseract and then took it away!" 

Tony looked sidewise at Loki, trying to gauge his reaction to this nonsensical rant. Loki wasn't giving away anything, though. 

Clint continued his attempt to talk Selvig down. "Feels empty, doesn't it. Without that freedom from worry whether what you're doing is right. But you can get back to how you were before." 

Selvig shook his head scornfully at Barton."You don't understand, you were just following orders! I understood her! She talked to me. The ultimate truth never really leaves your mind once it's there. Maybe your little knock on the head made you forget, or maybe she never spoke to you the way she did to me. It doesn't matter. Nothing you could say will change this." 

"I never meant you to suffer like this," Loki said, much too quiet in the spaces around Erik's rant. "But I needed someone who could take what the Tesseract gave and translate it into Earth's sciences. I needed you. Otherwise it would have been much harder to salvage what I could of the situation I found myself in." 

"You won't confuse me that way, I knew your plans, I knew everything! Don't pretend to me you're not the tyrant who tried to conquer Earth! Don't hide from me, you devil! Where are your horns?" 

Loki flicked his wrist, and he was Aesir again, armor black and gold, horned helmet and scepter in place. 

"I am Loki," he said calmly. "I am one and the same." 

Selvig leveled a terrible glare at him. "And you're here with them, why? To take away everything you left me with before? Or have you actually fooled them into thinking you could be anything so noble as an Avenger? We both know the Tesseract doesn't leave a mind alone so easily. The temptation to use that power will always be too much." 

"I have held greater power," Loki replied, "and, truly, it does destroy the wielder as easily as the target. I nearly crushed a planet, once, and the only way I could let go of those ambitions was to let go of my very life." He paused, taking a breath. "No, it is never easy." 

Tony was staring at Loki now, as were most of the Avengers. Loki felt far too exposed. 

Bruce gave a quietly satisfied noise as he removed the key piece, the crystal, and placed it in the buffered carrying case. The machine was dead. 

Selvig collapsed, looking like he had no more reason to continue... anything. It tore at the ragged edges of Loki's conscience. 

Steve frowned at him, his face a mess of lost confusion and determined concern. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I still don't understand why you did this. What did you mean, what don't you have any more? Can we help?" 

"The search for knowledge," Erik answered him. "It was my life, and now it's gone." 

"But surely you don't need the Tesseract for that? Science is a pretty good way of learning things, isn't it?" 

Selvig shook his head, slow and grim and tired. "That's not it. Knowledge, learning... it's about growth. I've been to the top of the mountain. I've been infinite. There's nowhere left to go." 

Bruce nodded in understanding. "It's the worst thing you can do to a scientist, give them knowledge that something incredible is possible, but make testing it, learning about it, so dangerous or harmful as to be unethical. It's like... being able to taste the most delicious food, and then seeing it every day but knowing that you're deathly allergic to it. Nothing else tastes quite the same." 

"That's part of it," Selvig said. "I tried to go back, do my work, but all the time I knew there was an easier way to know things, because everything the Tesseract told me was so _certain._ I'm ruined as a scientist. I don't want evidence. I want to _know._ " 

"That part," Clint said, "that's what got me. Took me a while to level out from that high." 

"The ultimate truth," said Loki. "For one who knows the slippery nature of words and even thoughts, how they turn about when you least expect - to depend at least on the Tesseract was indeed tempting." 

Erik looked at the two of them despairingly. "Why are the two of you fine, and I'm not?" 

"Practice," Loki said. "Practice at slipping in and out of a part played. Practice at losing everything and rebuilding with what you find. You have only ever been one thing, Erik, a pragmatic academic, a skeptic, a scientist, the ultimate neutral party. To show you what it is like to fight wholeheartedly for a cause... it was, perhaps, cruel. But I needed you. I needed your knowledge." 

"Can you do anything to help him?" Steve asked, but not really as if he expected Loki to have an answer. 

Loki thought. He needed to consider this carefully. There might be a way. But magic of the mind was never a first choice of his, especially when it meant taking away, rather than giving. 

"It may do more harm than I have already caused," he said. 

"It doesn't matter," Erik said. "If you can't, then I'm finished. Do your worst." 

So Loki put a hand to Selvig's temple, and went to work. 

* * *

Doctor Selvig woke up in a hospital, and there he was told that he had been in a coma since the accident at the Joint Dark Energy facility. The Tesseract and the data they'd been collecting on it was all a blur. The facility was rubble and the Tesseract gone from the planet, so he would need to find some other project to work on. SHIELD had some suggestions - apparently scientists with his clearance were in demand - and a couple of them seemed pretty interesting. 

He followed up on one of them, finding it the most satisfying. And if sometimes his thoughts lingered on the Tesseract, it was only with the quite natural curiosity of questions left unanswered. 

* * *

Loki was quiet through the flight home and debrief, which was not entirely unusual for him, but the way he played with one of his knives, almost fidgeting, was. 

Tony waited until they were home to say anything about it. 

"Something's got ya good." 

Loki leveled a glare at Stark, one that was not nearly as venomous as he intended. Tony thought he mostly looked tired. He came closer to the god, giving a sympathetic look. 

"I mean yeah, obviously. Always hard to see the stuff that happened while you were busy trying to fix other stuff. Hate it when I find my old weapons just a little too late." He dropped a hand onto Loki's shoulder, squeezing lightly, then sliding up to scrunch his fingers in the long black hair. Loki only stared straight ahead, his silence an agreement. 

"You were right about me, by the way," Tony continued. "I can get out of any slump as long as I've still got my genius and a way to build something with it. But even when you'd lost your magic, you were still pretty okay. This has got you, though. This thing with Selvig. And I'm just trying to figure out why." 

"I wish you would not," Loki said, his voice tight and almost choked. 

"I don't think that's gonna work out for you very well, wanting me to not try and figure things out. I'm not known for giving up." He moved his fingers through Loki's hair, trying to ease his tension and watching his face for any reaction. "You don't like to fail. What you hate is not being good enough. Not being a hero, not measuring up." 

"I have abandoned the ridiculous notion that I could ever outshine, or even equal my brother at what he does. No, I measure myself by myself now. You taught me that." 

"Yeah, all right, more specific, then. You're afraid of catastrophic failure. That everything you try to do will just make everything worse." 

Loki's jaw tightened, hearing it said like that. Finally he spoke. "I fear that that is inevitable. It is in my nature. I am an irreparable monster. Everything I have a part in turns to ruin." 

Tony shook his head. "I've been called a monster. It doesn't mean anything unless you let it. Loki. Listen to me. There's at least one thing you haven't messed up. This. You've saved my life enough times. I'd be gone without you. You're good for me." 

"Are you so blind?" 

Loki was shaking, Tony noticed at last, and still clad in his pale Aesir skin, as if he wasn't sure which monster he wanted to hide. 

"You don't have to pretend for me," Tony murmured, dragging a hand down the side of Loki's face as he pulled the god around to face him. "Everything you are is all right with me. You may be a twisted bastard, but you're _my_ twisted bastard, so you don't have to hide." 

Loki avoided his eyes, trying far too hard not to seek comfort where he could surely find it, but there were some things he could still not ask of Tony. 

Tony sighed, pulling him in for a kiss, trying to soften the resistantly stiff posture of the god. Loki's lips were warm under his, and he wasn't exactly resisting, but he was troubled, and Tony hated it. 

"Will you look at me?" he asked. "I wanna see my Loki. Freaky red eyes and all." 

Slowly he watched Loki's skin shift blue, and slowly the deep red eyes he loved came to meet his. It was always going to send a shock of fascination and admiration through him, when he saw the depths of those eyes. 

He kissed Loki again, and this time it was better, cold lips hungry for his and long lithe body leaning into Tony's. But the god was still so far from his usual confident self, and Tony needed to do something about that. 

"Come on, let's get to bed," he said, hauling Loki up and off down the hall to the bedroom. "We can hide for now, all right? Doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Cause right here, it's just you and me, OK?" He held on to both of Loki's cool blue hands, walking backwards down the hall so he could keep his eyes on Loki's face. He pulled the god into the bedroom, closing the door behind them with a nudge of his elbow. "And I - I love you," he said. It was strange, but right, and it was something that they both told themselves they knew, even if they never said it. But at this moment, Tony thought maybe it was something that Loki should hear. 

Loki's red eyes, still a little lost-looking, met his again with surprise. "How can you," he said, "unless you mistake me for something other than what I am?" 

Yep, he definitely needed to hear it. But the fight still wasn't over. 

"You are the craziest, most brilliant, most dangerous thing I've ever seen and I love that. You've lived a thousand years and spent all of it trying to figure out how the universe is put together and learning to take it apart. You're power and finesse and grace. You've learned all my tech and helped me build more, you could destroy everything I've built without even trying, but you don't, and that's not just amazing and difficult, it's _damn sexy,_ all right?" He pulled Loki down onto the bed and kissed him, deep and hungry. 

Loki didn't have an answer for Tony which he could put into words, which was just as well, because the kiss was claiming all their attention now. There was a sort of frenzy to the way they touched each other, as there often was after the Avengers had been called out and the danger that was their lives had made itself more obvious. Usually it was a celebration of still being alive and intact and free, and that was how Tony would have felt right now, except Loki's movements were still slightly off, still too much panic hiding in the adrenaline high. 

They rolled and tugged and nipped, stripping each other as they went, using all the energy not expended in what had, thankfully, proved to be mostly a negotiation rather than a fight. Tony claimed and held on to the top spot, sucking at Loki's jaw and neck, and the way Loki gasped and bucked slightly under him as his tongue slid across the cool blue skin reminded Tony of that first time, and how the heat of Tony's body, especially as amped-up as he was now, could affect Loki very strongly sometimes in this form. 

Tony grinned mischievously down at the god, developing a plan of action in his head. Loki's eyes practically glowed, both awaiting what Tony might be planning and somehow just drinking in the sight of Tony as if he were the only real, solid thing in a treacherous world. Tony leaned down to kiss the god's cheeks, trying to kiss away the lost expression just a bit more before he continued downwards, back to the blue neck and collar bone, then down Loki's chest and abdomen with open wet kisses and little bites, his hands following along beside. 

Finally he gripped Loki's hips and put his mouth on the purple-blue erection, the skin under his tongue perfectly smooth and cool and hard and eager, tasting of musk and the barest hint of some fruit, apricot or plum, something from the genus prunus, anyway. Loki breathed a sigh of desperate joy, his motions finally loosening as the heat of Tony's mouth enveloped him. 

Tony wrapped his tongue around Loki's cock, spreading heat across the receptive skin in a way that caused Loki to gasp and yell. Loki's hand found its way to Tony's hair, barely restrained from pulling in a way that might cause the human distress. Tony took that as a cue to take Loki deeper, sucking hard as he massaged Loki's hips with his thumbs. 

Loki was taken nearly out of himself by the motion and heat, and he gasped, "Tony!" and his grip tightened in the short brown hair, half involuntary and half a warning. Tony didn't stop, only reached down to caress Loki's balls with one hand, and heat and pressure and desperation collided and burst into flame, and Loki yelled and jerked up once into Tony's hot throat and came, Tony holding on and swallowing around him like he was determined to release every last ounce of pleasure the god was capable of holding. 

The moment stretched out, Loki growing oversensitive but not wanting it to end, and at last a change in his breathing and a twitch of his fingers led Tony to pull away and crawl up the bed, wrapping Loki in a hot, slightly damp embrace. He pulled Loki to his chest so that they were spooning, the arc reactor pressed to Loki's back so he could feel its hum, and Tony's dick pressing against his ass, hot and promising that this was far from over. 

Loki smirked and hummed thoughtfully. "If you want me to do something about that, you will have to release me, you know," he murmured. 

"Oh really?" said Tony, pausing briefly to nibble on the blue skin of Loki's shoulder. "What if you just lie here, and I do all the work?" 

Loki considered. "You think you can last through another round? Because if you start this, and then leave me wanting, I will be very put out." 

"Oh, I think I can manage," Tony said, throwing hot breath over Loki's ear and cheek. Not letting Loki go, he reached for the lube, just barely managing not to knock it off the nightstand instead, and Loki chuckled as Tony fumbled to open it with one hand. Then he set it down behind them on the bed, spreading what he had managed to acquire across his fingers before putting them to use. 

Tony wasn't being particularly gentle, but then his hands were always masterful in their manipulation of bodies, human or otherwise, and he could hardly have been called clumsy either. So when he pushed inside Loki quickly with one finger, then slowly slid further in, then out, then returned with a second to crook and stroke and explore methodically, it didn't feel as if Loki were being coddled, it felt as if he was an instrument being played by a master, a song that started out slow and sweet but held the leashed promise of power. 

The heat built as the lube began to warm to the temperature of Tony's fingers, and Tony's mouth was playing across the back of Loki's neck in counterpoint, and Loki felt the beginnings of a second wave of lust beginning to spread from where Tony was working him open. 

Tony took his time, and the kisses which now spread to Loki's shoulder had become more intense, Tony mouthing and sucking at the cool blue skin as if that was all he wanted, as if each mouthful of Loki nourished and satisfied him. There was such focus on each movement, so much subtlety and yet so much hunger, and Loki felt himself inevitably opening out, at once relaxing and tightening under that competent touch. 

Tony's other hand, the one that had been hooked under Loki and holding him in place, now stroked down his abs and into the hollow of one hip, not going near Loki's cock but somehow waking it anyway. The scorching fingers drifted upwards again, the touch so light but so intense that Loki gasped and his own hand found Tony's wrist, wanting both to return the caress, and to retain some measure of control over his body's reactions, which were losing cohesion under this onslaught. 

Tony chuckled, somewhat breathlessly, and pulled his fingers out of Loki's ass. "You ready for round two, then?" he asked. Loki opened his mouth to answer, but only a low groan came out, as Tony was now biting at the junction of his neck and shoulder. 

"You have only yourself to blame for that delay," said Loki, once he regained his voice. "I am very much ready." He growled a little, shifting down against Tony to put pressure on the human's cock. 

It was Tony's turn to groan, and now he took hold of his own cock, guiding himself in. The motion was smooth and incredibly perfect, slow without being maddening, every inch hard and hot and intense. Loki arched and twisted, and a broken cry escaped him. Tony was inside him and around him and he was fire and precision and torment and peace. 

Tony finished his slide and stayed for a bare moment, panting, then moved out again, with the same slow intent. His mouth worked at Loki's earlobe, tugging, and Loki took that as the invitation it was and turned his head to kiss Tony, and it was hot and beautiful and too much with everything else; he almost pulled away, but Tony kept him there, sucking his tongue into that intense heat, pulling him closer and continuing those slow thrusts that were almost maddening. So soon, so slow, and Loki was already close, full of an energy that wanted to be let loose, to burn his surroundings down. 

He did pull away from the kiss now, throwing his head back over Tony's shoulder and breathing harshly, and when Tony's hand slid down to his cock and squeezed it, sudden and strong, he writhed, and screamed as if he were being torn open. 

Tony quickened his pace inside Loki at last, and stroked him again, and the heat and pressure overcame Loki and he screamed louder, releasing, pouring out all over the sheets and gasping. 

Tony moaned and thrust hard into Loki, finally letting himself come, clinging tightly to the blue figure in front of him. They both shuddered as the hot come washed through Loki's cool form, they both sighed, and Tony's arms slowly relaxed around Loki, and he buried his face in the plume of black hair, breathing in the smell of it and breathing out hot air across Loki's scalp. 

Loki was still now, not quite relaxed yet but neither was he anywhere near as tense as he had been. He shifted, pulling away from Tony's limp cock to settle on his back, but he still did not look at Tony. Tony ran hot fingers across his forehead and temples and through his hair, lazily massaging the ridged blue skin. After a time spent this way, Loki spoke. 

"I am cursed. You should know this, and you should keep me away. I bring no good to anyone. My plans all go so far awry, I hardly recognize them by the end. There is no better path for me. All I find is new ways to be a monster." 

"Listen to me." Tony grabbed his shoulder and shook him, shifting the focus of Loki's red eyes to his own face. "Listen to me. That was the invasion; that was a lifetime ago, at least by media image standards. Nobody cares anymore what you did eighteen months ago. Right now, you did what you could to make it better. Right now, you're an Avenger. You're a good guy. You're not anything you don't want to be." 

"Anybody who would so easily disregard my past must be truly blind," Loki said, but his tension was receding, inch by painful inch. 

Tony made a derisive noise. "Anyone who idolizes Iron Man, or Black Widow, or Hulk, has the same vision problems. I'm not saying you're not dangerous. I'd never say that. But you're... I guess the closest word I can think of is 'human.' You're not infallible." He hefted himself up to lean over Loki and stare into his red eyes. "What you are is Loki. You don't do anything small, because nothing small is worth doing. You don't like it when your shit goes wrong, and I mean, come on, who does? But you've picked yourself up more times than anyone should have to, you're flexible enough to change your perspective to fit any place you find yourself. You're dangerous and freakish and monstrous and larger than life and I love you." 

Loki caught hold of Tony's hands, which had been flailing about pointedly with each sentence. "All right," he said, smiling, small but genuine. "You see all that, and yet you still insist you love me? You are a madman." He pulled Tony down into a forceful, passionate kiss. "And you are extraordinary. And I love you." 

Tony's smile grew slowly, steadily creeping over his whole face. He couldn't think of an appropriately enthusiastic answer, so instead, he just leaned down for another kiss, and that kiss was a promise, sure and unmistakable. Loki tasted it on his lips. 

Tony had changed, Tony was changing, Tony did change. That, more than anything, gave Loki hope for himself. He sighed, this time a breath of freedom, a contented sound. 

"You're thinking," commented Tony, eyes crinkling. "I wanna know what's in that brain. Tell me." 

Loki smiled, small and amused. "I am contemplating how very fluid your nature is, and yet how little of yourself you compromise to change it. It makes you very much a difficult man to truly know." 

Tony made a face. "That doesn't sound good. That sounds like one of those things annoyed women say to explain why they're leaving." 

"It is very good," said Loki. "You will change with the times, and after a few hundred years, that becomes essential. And it means that I will never be bored with you." 

Panic flitted through Tony's eyes, but didn't find ground to settle on. Instead Tony sank down onto Loki's chest, forcing himself to relax. "You really think that?" 

Loki smiled at his dear human lover. "Indeed. Learning you is a task that will never end." 


End file.
